Anonymous vs. Pseudonymous

In the recent “Google wants you to use your legal name on Goole+” discussion recently escalating through the web (also known as #nymwars) we have seen two words mixed up a lot: Anonymous and pseudonymous.

We can easily see that anonymity on the internet therefore is not in danger because you are not allowed to use your fictitious name. Because that name is an identifier that ties your post/writing/picture to one entity. Having a pseudonym makes you un-anonymous by definition.

I completely support everybody’s right to chose his/her own name but is has nothing to do with anonymity.

6 thoughts on “Anonymous vs. Pseudonymous”

There’s an important difference between the definition of “pseudonym” above, and the meaning of “pseudonymous” in the discussions about keeping online identities separate from “real-life” (aka legal- or wallet-) names. Compare eg. with the Wikipedia article on pseudonymity.
When an author, star or other celebrity goes by a fictitious name, their real name is often still known, or comes out eventually, and anyone can connect one with the other after little research. The people wishing to remain pseudonymous on G+ or wherever are proposing that this connection not be made public by default.

We can easily see that anonymity on the internet therefore is not in
danger because you are not allowed to use you fictitious name because that
name is an identifier that ties your post/writing/picture to one entity.
Having a pseudonym makes you un-anonymous by definition.

Using a fictitious name prevents you from being *completely* anonymous, but it makes you closer to anonymous (you gain some of the protections of anonymity) than when you are forced to use your meatspace name. I don’t see how you equate a policy that enforces a reduction of anonymity with “anonymity is not in danger”.

Ok. The Google+ case:
Google doesn’t really care which identifier you use, they just need to throw all your data on one heap to send you targeted advertising.

Nowadays we can show that two different people are probably the same by analyzing the writing style, we can compare online/offline times and have boatloads of data to correlate. A pseudonym doesn’t “really” protect you, especially against a service provider and also not against other users of said service.

And for the second part:
If you always use a very distinctive pseudonym that becomes your name (and as I outlined earlier we can map that to your real identity if we want to). If you use a random pseudonym that many others use as well you could gain a little bit of extra “anonymity” but if your name is “John Smith” you have that with your real name as well.

Anonymity (without “) is absolute. You are anonymous if there is no authorship marker on your content. If you sign your stuff with your “real” name or your pseudonym you are by definition not anonymous.

It’s a binary concept really. You can’t be a little bit anonymous just as you can’t be a little bit pregnant.

I agree that pseudonymous isn’t the same as anonymous, in the same way that rare isn’t the same as unique. But unlike with the pregnancy example, I see anonymity as being at one end of a spectrum, and having everything you do or say attached to your real-life-name at the other – and I put pseudonymity somewhere between the two.

Even when you’re using a distinctive pseudonym, if your service provider has a TOS that doesn’t let them share any of your other details with a third party (unless the 3rd party is law enforcement and you’ve been using it for libel/copyright infringement/harassment etc.), then it still provides a decent barrier. As you observe, this might only last for a matter of days/months, depending on your popularity and how careful you are with the pseudonym; but it’s enough if all you want to do is to blog about your personal life in a way that won’t affect your employment, or avoid the attention of a former acquaintance without withdrawing from the internet completely. Published-realnames-only prevents that.

To be honest, I think if you use a pseudonym to be more “anonymous” you need a better strategy.

The question really is if the publication of something would really hurt you (then stay anonymous and never mention to anyone that you published it) or if it really wouldn’t (then you can choose a name [your “real” one or a pseudonym]).

An invented name is really not a good security mechanic and believing that makes you do dangerous things you probably shouldn’t do. Because, as outlined, if the stakes are high you can and will find out who a certain pseudonym is.